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Land of the Lustrous #7 – Winter arrives as it always does in TV land, with a sudden shift from endless sunny days to snowfall and ice. Because of the weaker light, most of the gems go into hibernation, and even Kongō becomes sleepy. I guess he’s a similar lifeform to the gems after all.

Winter patrol falls to Antarcticite, who spends most of the year in liquid form. Yes, there is a real mineral (pdf) like this which only solidifies in very cold temperatures. Well, two— ice is another. And ice can apparently also host the microorganisms that bind the gems together.

The one tiny difference when the organisms form up in ice is that they build mindless evil creatures that feed off of the gems’ fears. So once again Phos’s desire to improve and eir gift for languages lead to no good. Even if e can be rebuilt again, e has lost another part of emself irretrievably.

Inuyashiki Last Hero #6 – When Hiro’s mother dies, unable to cope with the guilt and the harassment, is when he becomes truly unhinged. Deciding to put the “serial” in serial killer, he advances to true supervillainy while allowing the author to fantasize about how great it would be if someone hunted down and killed everyone on Japan’s equivalent of 4chan.

2channel, aka 2chan or 2ch, was the inspiration for 4chan. It’s known for a similar culture of anonymous trolling and hate speech, and seems to lend itself to similar stereotypes about nerds living in their moms’ basements.

While Hiro’s story devolves into a gorefest about a horrible person killing other horrible people, Ichirō is still learning the ropes of herodom. Under Naoyuki’s tutelage, his latest power is the ability to magically grow a USB port and then copy the entire functionality of a smartphone. This turns out to be an even neater trick because, in addition to being a flagrant violation of the end-user license agreement, it allows hands-free flying. Distracted flying is still an option, so he inadvertently winds up at the ISS (and we learn that he can function in a vacuum). I’m kind of hoping that’s the moment that leads to someone identifying him.

Magical Circle Guru-Guru #20 – Nike and Kukuri are enjoying a pleasant time on Lef Island, a bit of wordplay that doesn’t quite translate. One of the readings of the character for “island” is tō. So Lef Island is Refu-tō in the original Japanese, making it almost identical to the transliteration for “left”, which is refuto. The island to its east is never named, but we can all make an educated guess now.

Lef is a cakewalk in the adventure department, with the only local monsters easily defeated by Nike’s thief tricks. Kukuri can take the afternoons off shopping, watching puppet shows, and hanging out at the library. It takes a few repetitions of this for everyone to work out that they’re trapped in a time loop.

The villain responsible turns out to be none other than Kukuri herself. Many deep things could be said about her longing for a stable life with Nike and a friend her age. But you know what else this means? It means that Kukuri is now powerful enough to bend time to her will without even noticing. It might be just as well that she’s going to lose her powers before too long.

Hozuki’s Coolheadedness 2 #7 – Many are the legends of magic swords which recognize one true wielder. So Hozuki’s Coolheadedness serves up one, only it’s an evil kanabō which treats the unworthy to the Lego curse. It’s also a look at the lives of demon teenagers; even they have to deal with high school.

Hōzuki’s childhood friends Uzu and Yomogi edged into the frame last week, but it’s in the second half here that they finally get a proper introduction. They now work Hell’s engineering department, and become a couple of geeks along the way. Uzu is the guy who early-adopts everything and is trying to invent an android on the side; Yomogi is the type of sad waste of space who watches anime. More abuot that next week, it appears.

Kino’s Journey -the Beautiful World- the Animated Series#7 – Well, I think I can now identify the exact nadir of this series: the shot of Kino eating a hot dog from the most fanservicey angle possible. The reader poll may not have done them favors, but choosing that shot is entirely on the makers of this show.

After that achievement, we get the tale of the woman who trained Kino in the deadly arts. Once upon a time when she was a traveler, a corrupt policeman decided to frame her apprentice for drug trafficking and get some slave labor out of him. When she broke him out of prison, naturally the only thing they could do was take their huge cache of weapons to the top of a clock tower and shoot every single person who came within sight of it.

But it turned out they couldn’t help it because of brain tumors. Wait, no, that was the University of Texas shooter. It turned out that in that country, crippling dozens of policemen (and probably killing a few due to the odd severed artery) would inexorably lead to a quiet surrender and an invitation to leave peacefully. Yay for Kino’s future apprenticeship, but boo for decency, humanity, and by the way why didn’t the police bring in some heavy artillery of their own, or just blow the tower up? Boo for lousy writing.